


Controlled Spontaneity

by tobinlaughing



Series: Acting Classes [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012), Thor (Movies)
Genre: AIM - Freeform, Espionage, Gen, double agent, evil alter egos, how come things never go smooth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-02
Updated: 2013-06-02
Packaged: 2017-12-13 18:37:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/827511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tobinlaughing/pseuds/tobinlaughing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Part 2 of the "Acting Classes" series. The archive warning is in place on this one due to the events in Part 1, "Method Acting". I apologize if that's an inappropriate warning or the wrong way to use it in a series, but I'm trying to keep my bases covered.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Controlled Spontaneity

**Author's Note:**

> Part 2 of the "Acting Classes" series. The archive warning is in place on this one due to the events in Part 1, "Method Acting". I apologize if that's an inappropriate warning or the wrong way to use it in a series, but I'm trying to keep my bases covered.

Konstantin Stanislavsky, the father of Method Acting, taught his curriculum of emotional recall and visceral memory at the Moscow Art Theatre in the early part of the 20th century. One of his students was the nephew of playwright Anton Chekhov, of _The Cherry Orchard_ fame; Mikhail Chekhov believed wholeheartedly in the school of Realism that his uncle and Stanislavsky were building. Mikhail threw himself into the study of emotion and the development of a bank of emotional memories on which he could draw in any situation, for any character; but he went too far into himself, into his emotional studies, and eventually drove himself to a nervous breakdown. For that reason Stanislavsky revamped his curriculum, insisting upon physical training to condition the body and balance out the conditioning of the mind, and to keep other students from falling down the same slippery slope as Mikhail. 

Not every operation requires a year of study. Not every infiltration is to set up a long con. Emma was relieved to be able to put aside character studies, movement studies, emotional studies, any studies at all, and just be a pair of hands on this op: a conduit of hard-won and smooth-polished skills that didn't need to be filtered through emotional memories. Her actions would come from their place of truth, all right, but she wouldn't have to control any of the situations she was placed in. It was kind of nice to be a cog sometimes. 

The op was a distraction, pure and simple: a flashy bang-bang situation that would last just long enough for the eyes of the city to be anywhere but where they really needed to be. There were political inroads to be made, media outlets to exploit, and somewhere else the real crime would be happening, executed by a different team of operatives whose secrecy and security were paramount. 

Emma kept her weapon trained on the train platform, letting the pleasant murmur of conversation lap at her hearing from far below. No one at Gare du Lyon had seen her, or would pay attention once they had; there were other operatives on the ground who would be occupying their attention much more thoroughly. No, her part was to make sure no heroes emerged from the day: anyone who tried to sacrifice themselves for the good of others--wresting control of a train, pulling a concealed weapon on a hijacker, or helping the hostages escape--was to be brought down immediately. Their surveillance was good, and their plan was even better. This distraction would go off without a hitch and Emma would, once again, be in the wind. 

The hour was struck, and like a well-oiled machine AIM's covert operatives revealed themselves, openly toting large guns on the train platforms and menacing the innocent civilians into a rough circle while others in wait on the trains yanked drivers and passengers from their seats and flung them off the trains. Transportation marshals, identified early on, were incapacitated, either with swift blows to the head or simple, portable chloroform rags held over their mouths. Would-be heroes were divested of their weapons and tools. Emma squeezed off two warning bursts of bullets at a narcotics-sniffing dog handler team; the dog was chloroformed and its handler shoved in amongst the rest of the passengers on the platform. Children wept, women screeched and pleaded in French, German, English; men stood threateningly and growled warnings at their attackers, but the scene remained in tense tableau. The order was to minimize the loss of life, although injury was no prohibited so long as it was deemed necessary. To Emma's practiced eye the initial takeover and hostage selection had gone according to plan.

Her relief tapped her on the shoulder and gave the sign-countersign exchange. Emma waited until he was in position, his tripod, scope and weapon set up, before swiftly disassembling her own and leaving her perch in the rafters. Panic buttons had been pushed but an impressive display of explosives--hopefully not to be used, but there just in case--was keeping the local authorities from descending on the train station with GIPN teams and tear gas. The lead ''terrorist'' on this venture (a veteran AIM operative with an impressive set of acting chops, of whom Emma was only a tad jealous) was already giving a masterful performance as a slightly mad Christian fanatic bent on misguided salvation for the people she was holding hostage. Emma slipped in and down into the paralyzed train station, evicting an enterprising couple of teenagers from a broom closet who were content to wait out the hostage situation. She turned them over to the nearest AIM operative with a nod and a murmured sign-countersign in French before going back to the broom closet to shed her uniform and take up her disguise. 

The short, blonde pixie cut was a relief after the heavy and curly necessity of Darcy's long black hair. Extensive surgery hadn't been necessary, but she'd had her lips modified and her brows waxed almost into nonexistence to make her blonde hair seem more natural. Trendy collegiate bohemianism had gone by the wayside in favor of simple, tailored pants, skirts and button-down shirts that made up Emma's preferred wardrobe. Now looking a lot more like a certain British actress with a similar name, Emma slipped easily into the crowd of terrified commuters to wait out the situation. When the requisite time had passed, the situation would be resolved and AIM's operatives would escape with the hostages. It was a textbook operation, researched, rehearsed, planned in terms of every contingency every participant could think of.

No one had thought about Thor.

Jane Foster sat next to a bench on the platform, fuming up at one of the ''terrorists'' and holding a kleenex to her still-bleeding nose. Emma kept her head turned to the side, hoping the modifications to her facial structure had been enough that Jane wouldn't recognize her in profile. Leaving Foster alive after her last long con had been a calculated risk, but she didn't see a reason to risk the wrath of an Asgardian thunder-god and Jane had still been exploring new lines of research. Still, when no replacement had come to the Tower after the Darcy con, data on Jane Foster had dried up; still, Emma fumed, _someone_ should have been tracking her movements, _especially_ when interference by the selfsame thunder-god could result not only in an interruption to an otherwise well-executed operation, but unnecessary injuries. The current casualty list topped out at a few sore heads, one or two bloody noses, and a few chloroformed guards (and one narcotics dog). If Thor showed up and started bashing heads with his damned hammer, that list would spool itself out in no time and include deaths.

Emma tapped frantically on her belt-buckle, encoding a message to the CIC: _Unforeseen complications. Avengers incursion imminent. Request modification of planned op. Relay all_. Her implanted ear comm buzzed with receipt of her message--and then there was a heartbeat full of adamantine silence just before Thor struck the ground on the furthest train platform, the air shredding in his wake. The shockwave of his passage rocked the halted trains on their tracks and blasted the people nearest him off their feet; on the main platform, the crowd of hostages surged backwards against one another, falling, twisting knees and spraining elbows, blood surging from noses as the pressure wave rolled over them. Emma struggled to her feet in time to see Thor swing in a wide arc, bellowing for Jane and knocking three AIM agents into a brick wall. Two of them slumped to the floor, their necks broken. 

There weren't supposed to be any fatalities on this op. 

Emma snaked through the panicking, huddling crowd, dragging her Darcy costume from her memories and straining to reach Jane's side before the crowd of hostages stampeded her off the platform. She grabbed Foster's arms as Darcy's voice hissed, "Stop him before he kills someone!" _Someone else_, her brain amended--thinking, once again, in Darcy's voice.

Jane Foster turned, wide eyed, shocked more by hearing the words in English as hearing them in a familiar voice. She must have had been in France for a while. Her face went a sickly, sallow pale color at the sight of Emma--of Darcy, wearing Emma's new face. A calculated risk. "D-Darcy?" she breathed. Then, anger rose up, suffusing her cheeks with high, hectic color: " _Darcy!!_ "

Emma didn't wait for her righteous wrath to come full-bore. "Foster, _listen to me_ ," she ordered, keeping her hands clamped around Jane's upper arms. "Thor is going to kill people if you don't stop him. No one else has to die today. No one was _supposed_ to die today. You get to him, make him get you out of here. Go! Now!" She shoved Jane, who continued to stare at her. " **GO!** " Darcy bellowed, shoving her again. Jane finally took the hint, tearing her eyes away from Darcy and finding Thor's roaring form in the midst of a storm of havoc on the far platform. Jumping as high as she could, buffeted by fleeing hostages, Jane waved her arms frantically and yelled for Thor--who took notice, broke off his attack, and hurtled across the open tracks between them to scoop her up. 

"Darcy was here! I saw her!" Jane babbled frantically, and they both cast about them with desperate gazes--but Emma had shed Darcy again and was already to the doors, running with the same sense of panic as the hostages around her. The op had been abandoned: she could see other AIM operatives in civilian disguises making their own getaways, blending naturally with the crowd. Emma's panic, however, was unfeigned: if Thor got a bead on her he could be at her side in an eyeblink, ruining her getaway, her cover, the whole four-year operation of which she was so proud. He would kill her there or hold her until Natasha could be brought in--and then Natasha would kill her. 

Self-preservation and years of training and conditioning took over, forcing Emma to slow her steps, to clutch her handbag with its vetted fake IDs as she stumbled to a police car and babbled in flawless, frentic French the same pleas for help and succor as the other former hostages around her. As the emergency workers herded them all to waiting vans or ambulances as needed, Emma slipped through the police cordon and into the growing crowd of spectators, held at bay by policemen with GIPN shields. She appropriated a brimmed cap from one unobservant rubbernecker and slipped her sunglasses from her purse, working her way expertly backwards through the throngs until the panic faded around her and she was just another pedestrian on the Lyon streets. Slipping into a cafe, she ordered a coffee and a neopolitina, choosing a table in a corner and forcing herself to relax as though she'd been there the whole afternoon. A series of slow taps on her belt buckle rearranged her exfil details.

Thor and Jane Foster, with twenty other SHIELD agents, swept through the streets of Lyon in the wake of the fleeing hostages, searching desperately for any sight of Dr Foster's former assistant. Emma had already caught a ferry on the Rhone and was on her way upstream to her new exfil location. When sunset brought no further sign of pursuit, Emma let herself relax, just a little, and tucked Darcy back into her emotional memories. 

Something might have to be done about Dr. Foster.


End file.
